Exotic Waters
by technogeekmituna
Summary: Forced to go on a vacation in the Philippines by Aradia, Sollux and Karkat are attempting to enjoy themselves. By chance, when Sollux leaves the hotel and visits the beach, he meets Feferi, unbeknownest to him that she is a mermaid, and befriends her. Although Eridan is against the friendship and Karkat's jealous of his friend's absence, the two become closer. Then things happen.


A/N: This is the prologue to an AU I've been scheming together. It will be a mermaidstuck kind of thing, but aside from headcanons and plot points I don't really have much going for it.

So!

If anyone has an idea, or suggestion, or something to do with background for merpeople, then go ahead and send it to me!

Thanks for reading!

* * *

Sollux had been against the idea from the moment the words had left Aradia's mouth. She had been insistent with the preposterous suggestion; he had been insistent that it was an awful suggestion and refused to go along with it. Aradia had brought up the idea without much warning, completely out of the blue. Sollux scoffed at the proposition and ignored her soft glare, intending to stop the discussion before it even began. However, Aradia knew how to push the right buttons to agitate him, continuing to hold her stare until he crumbled.

It was only a matter of time before his attempt to ignore her failed. Eyebrows pinched together, Sollux turned his attention from his laptop screen littered with jumbled codes to Aradia. The moment his eyes locked with hers, Sollux knew he had sealed his fate with the impending topic. He silently loathed himself. In turn, Aradia cheekily grinned.

The idea of going to a tropical resort to escape the major stresses that had been pinning on him was absurd to Sollux. Aradia appeared to think otherwise. He tried to object with the suggestion, but she would not hear it. She was determined to persuade him, but he was determined to objectify.

She said that the vacation would be good for his health, both mentally and physically. He was working too hard for a pitiful minimum wage, stressing too much about caring for Mituna and his grades, and that he was going to exhaust himself with issues that didn't need to be concerned about. Sollux tried to argue against her logic, but Aradia did not wait to tear his own apart.

Realizing he had entered a dispute he could not win, Sollux reluctantly surrendered and shrugged to accepting the suggestion. He knew Aradia was concerned about him, and despite the annoyance it caused, he appreciated it. Although he still argued that the location was too far away from Manitoba, but Aradia insisted the distance was just fine. She had been to the resort enough to argue it was worth the travel. Sollux was still against about the vacation plan, so Aradia offered to leave the decision up to Karkat.

Sollux regretted that decision, because it lead to the current moment of being miles away in Tandang Sora, staying in a crowded hotel on a resort island with an unrealistically hot beach called Siyoena. He still didn't understand how Aradia had persuaded Karkat. Sollux had thought Karkat would have agreed with his roommate, his best friend. Apparently he was a traitor. So now he had to spend a month in a foreign country.

He attempted to just resign himself in the room and not leave, but Karkat wasn't going to leave him be. Sollux would have thought Aradia had altered the old Karkat and replaced him if it wasn't for the fact that Karkat had asked if he was mad at him, which Sollux understood as a disguised common question. Sollux was bemused but not mad, which answered the hidden question.

When Karkat had finally persuaded his friend to at least visit the beach late in the afternoon, Sollux wondered off to the piers that lacked annoying people. With his bare feet dangling off the dock and resting in the cool water, he gazed out at the sea, wishing he had grabbed his laptop before he left his apartment.

Despite his boredom with watching the boats race across the water, dragging people on water skis behind, he happened to notice a lone swimmer further out. It piqued his curiosity that someone would swim that far out alone. As he continued watching the swimmer, Sollux realized that the person was a young woman, and that she was watching him in return.

When the engine of a nearby boat backfired, it startled Sollux enough to drag his attention away to see what had caused the loud noise. By the time he had looked back, the woman had disappeared. It perplexed him that she had suddenly vanished, but he assumed that she had swam back to the shore. Sollux decided then to return to his hotel room before the sun gave him a painful sun burn. Maybe he could steal Karkat's laptop once he returned.

* * *

Under the water, under waves created by the speeding boats, Feferi watched the boy on the docks stand and then turn to leave. She removed the goggles covering her eyes, the water trapped previously now one with the sea again, and continued to watch other people once the boy had left. She smiled longingly before turning away from the surface of the ocean and swam deeper down before she vanished into its depths.


End file.
